Suicide pill
A review of David Ayer's "Suicide Squad."
"I want to build a team of some very dangerous people, who I think can do some good," laments shadowy government agent Amanda Waller during the film's opening. This line also pretty much sums up "Suicide Squad," a film that probably began as a series of bright ideas and spiraled left, right and every which way imaginable.
There are traces of inspired madness in David Ayer's adaptation of the popular DC comics about a ragtag group of criminals recruited to save the day. Most of the jokes (at least the ones that work) are packed during the first act, and the funniest bits involve Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flagg. In one particular scene, Kinnaman as Flagg sarcastically condescends to Smith's Deadshot as they negotiate terms of Deadshot's cooperation, and the verbal joust is so funny that Margot Robbie's later antics as Harley Quinn end up like a bad TV movie that is always on replay.
I understand how hard it must be for Ayer to meet expectations on such a tentpole film with a huge fanbase. Ayer, known for his gritty realist crime thrillers such as "Street Kings" and "End of Watch" attempted to mount a dark antihero camp extravaganza, which despite being better by leaps and bounds compared to "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice," doesn't really add anything new to the superhero genre. The film attempts to be funny, but some of the humor are either misplaced or repetitive.
Even Viola Davis' Waller is confused if she wants to be a likable badass authoritarian or a mean, cold-hearted one-dimensional character. Or perhaps even a selfish bastard that turns out to have a heart of gold. Getting possessed by a centuries-old witch does that to you. At one point, I half-assumed that Davis will break into a fit, Annalise Keating-style and devour every living soul in the room. That would have been really cool.
Much of the film's problems lie in the story, which can be summarized in one sentence. In fact, the story begins with a solution rather than a problem, which is brilliant in terms of narrative approach had it in fact, worked. But as we soon find out, the solution itself created the problem, because otherwise, there would be no story.
In fact, "Suicide Squad" rather possesses a non-story. What the film has instead is a series of vignettes spliced to make everything seem logical. While entertaining, the introductory montage providing a snapshot of the characters is rather lazy filmmaking. Slipknot (Adam Beach) isn't even properly introduced.
Either that or "Suicide Squad" is a short film masquerading as a full-length feature, because really, the interesting stuff are all contained in the first 30 minutes. The next 93 minutes is just a drag to the end credits.
Also, when you start bombarding a film with too much familiar hardcore soundtrack, you know something is terribly wrong. Usually, music is used to heighten tension or to establish a mood but in "Suicide Squad," music is meant to show off how badass the film thinks it is.
God help the third act, where everything doesn't make sense anymore. Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) swims underwater to help plant a bomb just so the story can make use of him being well, a half-reptile. One of the nonhuman opponents (which will not be mentioned here, for the sake of averting spoilers) dies from a man-made bomb. Really? And the way the main opponent dies is just plain stupidity on the part of said main opponent. Everything in this film is so convenient Harley Quinn and the others ought to open up a convenience store.
And let's not forget Enchantress' (Cara Delevingne) outfit change halfway through the film, which coupled with her gyrations towards the end is a clear ripoff of Aaliyah's Akasha from "Queen of the Damned." The headdress is a giveaway.
And it has taken me this far without even mentioning Jared Leto as The Joker. Leto makes for an unusual, calculated take on the clown menace, but really he has very little to do in this movie. Perhaps his best and most memorable scene is when he follows Harley Quinn, then Dr. Harleen Quinzel into a vat of chemicals. The rest is just sideshow.
Of course, "Suicide Squad" is another cash grab attempt that unsurprisingly worked. No amount of negative critical feedback was able to put a lid on the film's massive ticket sales worldwide, because everyone was too curious on how a story of DC antiheroes would play onscreen. However, it wouldn't hurt to demand at least a little bit of logic to the story, because when all the flashes and bangs have cleared, all that remains is the carcass of wasted opportunity. People are crying out for a Joker-Harley spinoff, but I would rather see a film about Deadshot, or Katana, or El Diablo that will be directed by neither Ayer nor Zack Snyder.
Disclaimer: the contents of this review are solely the opinion of the writer, and does not necessarily represent the whole PLM Film Society.
